Ever wonder what initial actions were taken to free the slaves during the Civil War era? Those questions will be answered when Loyola University Chicago commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on Thursday, October 18, at 4 p.m., on the fourth floor of the Klarchek Information Commons.

Thursday’s event includes a private seminar for graduate students and the public lecture, “Abraham Lincoln: The Indispensable Man,” which will be delivered by award-winning Lincoln biographer, Michael Burlingame. Author and editor of 17 books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era, Burlingame is also the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

“The Emancipation Proclamation was the crowning achievement of Abraham Lincoln’s political career and an epoch moment in our nation’s history. Yet what the proclamation did and did not achieve has been widely misunderstood,” says Ted Karamanski, professor and public history graduate director at Loyola. “This public lecture is open to the entire Loyola community and will focus specifically on Lincoln’s leadership style and how that style confounded his political enemies.”

This event has been inspired by previous lectures on Loyola’s campus, including the “Bicentennial Celebration: Loyola, Lincoln, and Leadership, which took place in February 2009 and featured award-winning and best-selling author Doris Kearns Goodwin.

“I am hoping that Burlingame is going to explain the misapprehensions about the Emancipation Proclamation,” concludes Karamanski. “Some people think that it did nothing to free slaves and others believe differently. Usually people see it one way or the other because they don’t understand the legal aspects of the president’s power during the Civil War.”